Losing Control: How and Why People Fail at Self-Regulation - Hardcover

Baumeister, Roy F.; Heatherton, Todd F.; Tice, Dianne M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0120831406 ISBN 13: 9780120831401

Publisher: Academic Press, 1994

Synopsis

Self-regulation refers to the self's ability to control its own thoughts, emotions, and actions. Through self-regulation, we consciously control how much we eat, whether we give in to impulse, task performance, obsessive thoughts, and even the extent to which we allow ourselves recognition of our emotions. This work provides a synthesis and overview of recent and long-standing research findings of what is known of the successes and failures of self-regulation.
People the world over suffer from the inability to control their finances, their weight, their emotions, their craving for drugs, their sexual impulses, and more. The United States in particular is regarded by some observers as a society addicted to addiction. Therapy and support groups have proliferated not only for alcoholics and drug abusers but for all kinds of impulse control, from gambling to eating chocolate. Common to all of these disorders is a failure of self-regulation, otherwise known as "self-control."
The consequences of these self-control problems go beyond individuals to affect family members and society at large. In Losing Control, the authors provide a single reference source with comprehensive information on general patterns of self-regulation failure across contexts, research findings on specific self-control disorders, and commentary on the clinical and social aspects of self-regulation failure. Self-control is discussed in relation to what the "self" is, and the cognitive, motivational, and emotional factors that impinge on one's ability to control one's "self."

• Discusses the importance of the concept of self-regulation to general issues of autonomy and identity
• Encompasses self-control of thoughts, feelings, and actions
• Contains a special section on the control of impulses and appetites
• First book to integrate recent research into a broad overview of the area

About this title

From the Back Cover:

People the world over suffer from the inability to control their finances, their weight, their emotions, their cravings for drugs, their sexual impulses, and more. The United States in particular is regarded by some observers as a society addicted to addition. Therapy and support groups have proliferated not only for alcoholics and drug abusers but for all kinds of impulse control, from gambling to eating chocolate. Common to all of these disorders is a failure of self-regulation, otherwise known as "self-control."
The consequences of these self-control problems go beyond individuals to affect family members and society at large. In Losing Control, the authors provide a single reference source with comprehensive information on general patterns of self-regulation failure across contexts, research findings on specific self-control disorders, and commentary on the clinical and social aspects of self-regulation failure. Self-control is discussed in relation to what the "self" is, and the cognitive, motivational, and emotional factors that impinge on one's ability to control one's "self."

About the Author:

Roy F. Baumeister is currently the Eppes Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from Princeton in 1978 and did a postdoctoral fellowship in sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. He spent over two decades at Case Western Reserve University. He has also worked at the University of Texas, the University of Virginia, the Max-Planck-Institute, the VU Free University of Amsterdam, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Russell Sage Foundation, the University of Bamberg (Germany), and Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Baumeister's research spans multiple topics, including self and identity, self-regulation, interpersonal rejection and the need to belong, sexuality and gender, aggression, self-esteem, meaning, and self-presentation. He has received research grants from the National Institutes of Health and from the Templeton Foundation. He has over 500 publications, and his 31 books include EVIL: INSIDE HUMAN VIOLENCE AND CRUELTY, THE CULTURAL ANIMAL, MEANINGS OF LIFE, and the New York Times bestseller WILLPOWER: REDISCOVERING THE GREATEST HUMAN STRENGTH. The Institute for Scientific Information lists him among the handful of most cited (most influential) psychologists in the world. He has received several major awards, including the William James Fellow award (their highest honor) from the Association for Psychological Science, and the Jack Block Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

About this edition

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0120831406
• ISBN 13: 9780120831401
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 322